DOCSLIB.ORG

Tom Wolfe's New Book the Kingdom of Speech and Walter J. Ong's

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Tom Wolfe's New Book the Kingdom of Speech and Walter J. Ong's Tom Wolfe’s New Book The Kingdom of Speech and Walter J. Ong’s Thought Thomas J. Farrell Professor Emeritus in Writing Studies University of Minnesota Duluth [email protected] www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell They say that forewarned is forearmed. So stand forewarned: The following essay is a bit all over the place, as is the book I am here commenting on. Basically, in the present essay, I proceed by associative links of thought. Tom Wolfe (born in 1931; Ph.D. in American Studies, Yale University, 1957) is a fashionable prose stylist and satirist. In his new book The Kingdom of Speech, he gently spoofs Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and Noam Charisma’s linguistics theory. For his irreverent spoofs, Tom Wolfe may be banished – or worse! -- by the political-correctness police, because they do not like to have their secular sacred cows spoofed – especially by one of their fellow atheists. But what could the political-correctness police say or do to Tom Wolfe that would be worse than banishing him from the ranks of respectable secular intellectuals? Perhaps they could say that Tom Wolfe is really a closet conservative. In fact, that charge would be sufficient to banish him. But he is a southerner (born and raised in Richmond, Virginia). And he studied English at Yale University at a time when the southerner Cleanth Brooks, who distinguished himself as a Faulkner scholar, was a big shot in English at Yale. So perhaps Tom Wolfe is culturally a conservative southern agrarian, not a Yankee industrialist, eh? Years ago now, the Canadian Catholic convert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980; Ph.D. in English, Cambridge University, 1943), aligned himself in spirit with the southern agrarians in his article “The Southern Quality,” which is reprinted in the book The Interior Landscape: The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan 1943-1962 (McGraw-Hill, 1969, pages 185-209). In addition, he irreverently spoofed Yankee industrial culture in his short-essay-commentaries on various artifacts in his copiously illustrated book The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (Viking Press, 1951). Years ago now, after McLuhan had published his controversial books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press, 1962) and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McGraw-Hill, 1964), Tom Wolfe helped propel him to extraordinary fame by publishing his article “What If He [Marshall McLuhan] Is Right?” which is reprinted in Tom Wolfe’s book The Pump House Gang (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968, pages 133-170). By way of digression, I should point out here that McLuhan’s book title Understanding Media honored the title of Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren’s widely used textbook Understanding Poetry (Holt, 1938). McLuhan and Brooks were good friends, as Mark Royden Winchell details in his book Cleanth Brooks and the Rise of Modern Criticism (University Press of Virginia, 1996, pages 114, 204, 205, 295, and 391). Of course the political-correctness crowd today does not think that Marshall McLuhan is right. For them, he represents one road not taken. But what if Tom Wolfe today is still convinced that Marshall McLuhan is right? Wouldn’t this help explain why Tom Wolfe today is spoofing certain sacred cows of the political- correctness crowd in his new book? Wouldn’t this conviction be sufficient reason for him to risk the wrath of the political-correctness crowd? Now, Tom Wolfe is not the only person today who is offending against the spirit of political correctness. The developer Donald J. Trump of New York, the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential candidate, has garnered an enormous amount of free media coverage of various things he has deliberately said to offend the spirit of political correctness. And he has a fervent base of white middle-class male supporters cheering him on in his assault on the spirit of political correctness. But Trump’s fervent supporters do not strike me as likely to read Tom Wolfe’s new book, even though he gently spoofs certain secular sacred cows. Perhaps we should note here that Trump’s fervent white middle-class male supporters see the secular intellectuals in the political-correctness crowd as engaging in top-down social and political change – to the detriment of their economic and social standing. Historically in American culture, intellectuals have played a big role. So perhaps top-down political and social change is part of our American heritage, eh? Now, in Tom Wolfe’s estimate, Jesus is one of the six most influential people in world history (page 165). Charles Darwin is another one of the six, but, alas, Noam Chomsky is not. Tom Wolfe even paraphrases certain points from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which he characterizes as “the most radical social and political doctrine ever promulgated (page 166). No doubt many Christian believers today would agree with his assessment. But don’t Noam Charisma and the political-correctness crowd fancy themselves as promulgating “the most radical social and political doctrine” in contemporary American culture? You bet, they do. In addition, they tend to see themselves as pitted against Christian and other religious believers. Their secular spirit could be summed up in the rallying cry, “Atheists of the world, unite!” Unfortunately for the atheists, religionists in American culture still outnumber them by a wide margin, and American religionists tend to be organized at the grassroots level into activist cells known as churches and synagogues and mosques and the like – some of which tend to be more conservative in terms of social and political doctrine, while others tend to be more liberal and progressive. However, in terms of contemporary American culture, it is hard to imagine the rallying cry, “Religionists of the world, unite!” Of course in terms of contemporary world culture, it is also hard to imagine the rallying cry, “Religionists of the world, unite!” But not so long ago, the official anti-religion position of communism did evoke widespread anti- communism in American culture and world culture. Fortunately for contemporary American culture, our idealistic atheist intellectuals/activists under the influence of Noam Charisma and other charismatic leaders have not yet managed to evoke a widespread response as strong as anti-communism hysteria once was in American culture. Nevertheless, the secularists are working on it. Perhaps we should recall that the British novelist George Orwell (1903-1950) was an atheist socialist who, like Tom Wolfe at a later time, like to write satirical spoofs. Surprise, surprise! Anti-communists in postwar American culture co-opted the British atheist’s novels Animal Farm (1946) and Nineteen Eighty- Four (1948) to help advance anti-communist hysteria in the United States after World War II. So couldn’t enterprising American conservatives today co-opt the American atheist’s new book The Kingdom of Speech to help advance the conservative critique of the spirit of political correctness? In theory, perhaps conservatives could do this. However, I do not think it is likely that conservatives are going to do this. Now, the charismatic Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is Jewish, has at times described himself as a socialist. However, in his presidential primary campaign for the Democratic Party’s nomination, he did not go out of his way to identify himself as a secularist out to advance an anti-religion agenda. On the contrary, Senator Sanders publicly praised Pope Francis for his spirited strafing of capitalism. In addition, in his presidential primary campaign here in Minnesota, where I live, Senator Sanders shrewdly declined former Governor Jesse Ventura’s offer to endorse him publicly. When former Governor Ventura was in office, he often mocked Christians for their tendency to turn the other cheek – something a big tough guy like Ventura would never do. In Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential primary campaign against Senator Sanders, she managed to advertise her Methodist faith. Even though I do not understand fully how certain persons may seem to others, or at least to some others, as charismatic, it strikes me as fair to say that Hillary is not a charismatic speaker (but neither am I). There are far too many American voters who identify themselves as religious believers of one kind or another for any hopeful presidential candidate to espouse an explicitly anti-religion position. For this reason and others, I do not think that Noam Charisma or other secular intellectuals would be viable presidential candidates. Arguably Noam Charisma and other secular intellectual today can be understood as secular embodiments of the spirit of ancient Hebrew prophets such as Amos who called for economic justice (also known today as social justice). In this respect, Noam Charisma and other secular intellectuals today can be contextualized in the American Protestant tradition of the American jeremiad. See the Jewish scholar Sacvan Bercovitch’s book The American Jeremiad, 2nd ed. (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012). Now, under the leadership of the prophet Moses, God’s chosen people set out from Egypt for the “promised land.” But the “promised land” means that they were to become agrarians – you know, like those more recent southern agrarians mentioned above. Nevertheless, to purify them for their eventual religious destiny in the “promised land,” they wandered around in the desert for forty years. They needed to be purified spiritually of their cultural conditioning in Egypt. For more than forty years now, the political-correctness crowd has been wandering in the secular intellectual desert, following their various secular intellectual prophets. Arguably McLuhan was one alternative prophet that intellectuals could have followed, but he was a Roman Catholic. Disclosure: I would characterize myself as a theistic humanist, as distinct from a secular humanist. In our contemporary culture wars, I tend NOT to endorse the anti-religion position of certain secular humanists.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Tribute to Robert Penn Warren J
    The Kentucky Review Volume 2 | Number 3 Article 3 1981 A Tribute to Robert Penn Warren J. A. Bryant Jr. University of Kentucky Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kentucky-review Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Bryant, J. A. Jr. (1981) "A Tribute to Robert Penn Warren," The Kentucky Review: Vol. 2 : No. 3 , Article 3. Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kentucky-review/vol2/iss3/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Kentucky Libraries at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Kentucky Review by an authorized editor of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Tribute to Robert Penn Warren J. A. BRYANT, JR. We are all here tonight for the same purpose, to honor a man who by his achievements and his stature as a human being, can come closer than anyone else I know to making Kentucky, which is after all a hodge-podge geographically, politically, and c111.lturally, if there ever was one, speak with one voice, say yes to something in unison. It's a cause for both sadness and rejoicing that there are some occasions when more than miles separate the Purchase and the mountains, the Tennessee Ridge and the Ohio River. But Red Warren, as his friends have been calling him now for most of his seventy-five years, miraculously unites Bluegrass and Pennyrile, just as he has miraculously encompassed Tennessee, Louisiana, the Midwest, New England, to say nothing of Europe and especially Italy, and made them, transformed, inhabit a body of fiction and verse in which we detect what Donald Davison, an old friend and Tennessean, was wont to call "the Kentucky voice of Warren." It's a distinctive voice that we Kentuckians respond to, acknowledge, and tonight claim as our own.
    [Show full text]
  • Ii the New Criticism and Leavisian Criticism
    II THE NEW CRITICISM AND LEAVISIAN CRITICISM Though the New Criticism had its ongms in Britain in the criticism of T. S. Eliot, the theory of I. A. Richards and the practice of William Empson, its most powerful impact has been in America. John Crowe Ransom, who published a book entitled The New Criticism in 1941, was the leading American influence and he acknowledged a debt to Eliot and Richards. The other major American New Critics were Cleanth Brooks, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren and W. K. Wimsatt. Indirectly related to the New Criticism are such important figures as Kenneth Burke and R. P. Blackmur. The early New Critics were politically conservative and their attitudes to literature were shaped by their opposition to certain twentieth-century tendencies of thought, such as Marxism. The fundamental aim of American New Criticism was to create a critical alternative to impressionism and historical scholarship, and thus there are some parallels with Russian Formalism. It advocated 'intrinsic' criticism - an impersonal concern for the literary work as an independent object - and opposed 'extrinsic' critical approaches, which concerned themselves with such matters as authorial intention, historical, moral or political considerations, and audience response. The earlier New Criticism was primarily interested in lyric poetry and regarded most highly forms of poetry in which irony, tension, paradox and ambiguity interact with the semantics of language in such a way, they believed, as to render poetic meaning unique and un­ paraphrasable. They claimed, however, that poetry could impart knowledge but a form of knowledge radically different from knowledge in the scientific sense.
    [Show full text]
  • British and American New Criticism William E
    1 British and American New Criticism William E. Cain For much of the twentieth century, the New Criticism was the dominant method of textual interpretation. Most critics and teachers of literature in college and universities, both in Great Britain and the United States, were committed to “close reading”—the intensive study of the words on the page, the careful examination of the poem in itself, which was the theory and practice that the New Criticism described and promoted. The New Critics were different in important respects from one another, but, as one of their leaders, Cleanth Brooks, observed: “The one common element that I can discern among those loosely grouped together as New Critics was the special concern they exhibited for the rhetorical structure of the literary text” (Brooks 1984: 42). Few today would claim to be or would aspire to become a New Critic. The movement expired, it is generally agreed, decades ago. Yet when it arose and established itself, the New Criticism was viewed not only as significantly “new” but also as superior to ­everything that had preceded it. In the mid‐1950s, Hyatt H. Waggoner identified the New Criticism as “the best criticism we have or are likely to have for a long time. Certainly, it is the chief reason why it is perfectly correct to characterize our age as, whatever its other failings, a brilliant age for criticism.” In Waggoner’s judgment, “the greatest contribution” that the New Criticism had made was “its creation and demonstration of a way of talking about literature at once objective and literary … There are no extrinsic or irrelevant standards applied, there is no subjectivism,COPYRIGHTED and there is no mystique.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, and the Southern Literary Tradition Joseph Blotner
    Robert Penn Warren Studies Volume 5 Centennial Edition Article 10 2005 Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, and the Southern Literary Tradition Joseph Blotner Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/rpwstudies Part of the American Literature Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Blotner, Joseph (2005) "Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, and the Southern Literary Tradition," Robert Penn Warren Studies: Vol. 5 , Article 10. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/rpwstudies/vol5/iss1/10 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Robert Penn Warren Studies by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, and the Southern Literary Tradition JOSEPH BLOTNER By the Southern literary tradition, I mean the works which were there, not some theoretical construct but rather aspects – models and genres – which would be prominent parts of the received tradition Warren and Brooks knew. This will be a speculative attempt, glancing in passing at the massive, two-volume textbook which they wrote and edited with R. W. B. Lewis: American Literature: The Makers and the Making (1973). But it will be difficult to extract a definition from it, as their remarks on their method put us on notice. For example, “William Faulkner has clearly emerged as one of the towering figures in American literary history and would undoubtedly warrant the
    [Show full text]
  • Unit 4 John Crowe Ransom and Cleanth Brooks
    UNIT 4 JOHN CROWE RANSOM AND CLEANTH BROOKS Structure Objectives John Crowe Ransom: 'Introduction "Criticism Inc." Other Essays by J.C.Ransom The Achievement of J.C.Ransom Clmth Brooks: Introduction "Irony as a Principle of Structure" Other Essays by Cleanth Brooks The Achievement of Cleanth Brooks Glossary Questions Reading List Fn this unit, we shall examine the contribution of John &we Ransom and Cleanth Brooks to literary -+ticism. We shall make a detailed study of one important essay by each of them. Though they had a lot in common, there is =,me difference in their critical approaches, as we shall see. John Crowe Ransom (1 888- 1974) was born in Pulaski, and rtoeived his bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University in 1909. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Christ Church College, Oxford,and took a degree there in 1913. After service in the First World War he returned to Vanderbilt University, where he taught till 1937. He was a leading member of the group of writers known as the Southern Agrarians or Fugtives (after a poetry magazine The Fugitive co-founded by Ransom md Allen Tate). This group, which included Cleanth Brooks, Allen Tate and Robert PmWarren, is identified with the rise of New Criticism in America. They shared religious, political and cultural convictions of a conservative character, with a special allegiance to the American South. Many leading poets of the period, such as Allm Tate, Donald Davidsm, Robert Perm Warren and Randall Jarrell considered him their mentor. He made his mark as a poet, though he was not very prolific.
    [Show full text]
  • Book Reviews
    Book Reviews Master Manipulator: The Explosive True joined by Dr. Diana Schendel, a career separation between Congress, CDC, FDA, Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and government scientist, and Coleen Boyle, NIH, and big pharmaceutical producers. Government Betrayal at the CDC, by Ph.D., of Agent Orange cover-up fame. James O. Grundvig, hardcover, 296 pp, The story’s tension is provided by the James F. Coy, M.D. $17.33, ISBN 151070843X, New York, N.Y.: increased awareness of the mercury- Fruitland Park, Fla. Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. autism connection by tens of thousands of victims, and the economic needs of the The Kingdom of Speech, by Tom Wolfe, As Sir Francis Bacon wrote, vaccine industry. As Grundvig summarizes, hardcover, 183 pp, $26, ISBN 978-0-316- “Knowledge is power.” I commend this CDC had a choice to either do a full- 40462-4, New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and book to anyone seeking understanding. blown study to prove or disprove a link, Company, 2016. James Grundvig, coincidentally of or to report “no adverse effect.” Based on Scandinavian (Norwegian) descent, extensive research, Grundvig exposes the Groundbreaking journalist and best- worked for 30 years in engineering as details of making the latter choice. selling novelist Tom Wolfe, author of The a project manager, developing skills As early as 1992, a renowned scientist Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, and he would use to research how, who, wanted Merck to minimize mercury in I Am Charlotte Simmons, now applies where, when, and why, after his son was Scandinavian vaccines, and single-dose his virtuosity to the source of all of diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
    [Show full text]
  • Of the Blues Aesthetic
    Skansgaard 1 The “Aesthetic” of the Blues Aesthetic Michael Ryan Skansgaard Homerton College September 2018 This thesis is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Skansgaard 2 Declaration: This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. At 79,829 words, the thesis does not exceed the regulation length, including footnotes, references and appendices but excluding the bibliography. This work follows the guidelines of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Acknowledgements: This study has benefitted from the advice of Fiona Green and Philip Coleman, whose feedback has led to a revitalised introduction and conclusion. I am also indebted to Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper, Robert Dostal, Kristen Treen, Matthew Holman, and Pulane Mpotokwane, who have provided feedback on various chapters; to Simon Jarvis, Geoff Ward, and Ewan Jones, who have served as advisers; and especially to my supervisor, Michael D.
    [Show full text]
  • Brooks and Warren
    NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES • VOLUME 6 NUMBER 2 ° APRIL 1985 Brooks and Warren by ROBERT PENN WARREN Cleanth Brooks On the announcement by the National Endowment for the Humanities that Cleanth Brooks had been selected as the Jefferson Lecturer, the editor of this journal kindly invited me to write a little essay about him. Naturally, my heart was in the project, but I finally accepted with a degree of uncertainty and doubt. For some days I could not find a way for me into the subject. There are, without question, others more capable of assessing his contribution to the criticism of this period. And what would it mean, I asked myself, if I gave the impressive list of his distinctions and tried to recount the influence he has exerted on scholars and critics—or the mutual blood­ letting? Then I stumbled on the notion that I am about to pursue. Thinking of Cleanth led me to think in general about a peculiar good fortune that has been with me most of my life. Time and again, at some crucial moment, I have come upon a person who could open my eyes to some idea, some truth, some self- knowledge, some value that was to make all the dif­ ference to me—something which sometimes I had been half-consciously fumbling for in the dark. The revelation might come in an instant or might grow over a long friendship. No clearer case of such a pro­ longed process has ever come to me than that of the long friendship with the Jefferson Lecturer of this year.
    [Show full text]
  • Walter J. Ong, SJ: a Bibliography
    Walter J. Ong, S. J.: A Bibliography 1929-2006 By Thomas M. Walsh, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English Saint Louis University, with the assistance of M. Kathleen Schroeder Copyright © July 18, 2006 By Thomas M. Walsh, Ph.D. Walter J. Ong, S.J.: A Bibliography 1929-2006 (hereafter cited as WJOB) consists of 457 original publications of books, book chapters, articles, reviews, translations by Ong, poems, and limited-distribution items. With the addition of reprints, revisions, translations of Ongs works by others, and other items, WJOB contains 909 entries. Prepared for the Walter J. Ong, S.J., Center for Language and Culture at Saint Louis University, this bibliography constitutes the most complete and accurate register of his published works through 2006. It is based on citations to his works in his books, on miscellaneous bibliographical items in The Walter J. Ong Manuscript Collection at Saint Louis University, and on three unpublished bibliographies compiled by Father Ong himself: (1) A Chronological Bibliography of the Publications of Walter Jackson Ong, SJ, from 10 July 1929 through 15 August 1997ff.1 a collection of bibliographical cards, with occasional annotations (hereafter cited as CBPWJO); (2) Some Scholarly Publications and Some Other Publications [of Walter J. Ong, S. J.: May 1940-July 1961]; and (3) Some Scholarly and Some Other Publications [of Walter J. Ong, S. J.: May 1940-October 1972]. The latter two he derived from CBPWJO. Discrepancies were identified by collation of Ongs bibliographies with electronic databases, such as WorldCat, RLIN, JSTOR, MLA, and ATLA, as well as with bibliographies of his works by Randolph F.
    [Show full text]
  • CURRICULUM VITAE Paul H
    CURRICULUM VITAE Paul H. Fry William Lampson Professor of English, Emeritus Yale University Office: Henry Koerner Center, Rm. 118 Yale University New Haven, CT 06520 203-824-3761 [email protected] EDUCATION AND DEGREES Harvard University. May 1974 Ph. D. Dissertation: “Byron’s Myth of the Self” University of California, Berkeley. 1966 B. A. GRANTS AND AWARDS 2018. Juror, Brock International Teaching Prize 2011. Winner, Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teaching Award, Kennedy Center for the Arts 2008- Appointed Associate Member, Department of Comparative Literature, Yale 2008- Awarded Provostial Research Fund. Fall 2008-Spring 2009. Residency, Yale Center for British Art, to develop an interdisciplinary course syllabus. Fall 2002-Spring 2003. Full-year Leave of Absence 1999. Reappointed: Master, Ezra Stiles College, Yale 1995. Named: Master, Ezra Stiles College, Yale 1993. Named: The William Lampson Professor of English 1989. A. Whitney Griswold Research Grant 1988. Named Instructor, NEH Faculty Seminar, Summer 1989 1987. Honorable Mention, the John H. McGinnis Award, Southwest Review 1986. Promoted to Full Professor, Yale University. 1985. Appointed Fellow, Whitney Humanities Center (1985-88) 1982. Granted Tenure, Yale University 1981. The Melville Cane Award (Poetry Society of America) for The Poet’s Calling in the English Ode 1979. Frederick W. Hilles Publication Fund 1978. A. Whitney Griswold Research Grant 1976-77. Morse Fellowship 1971. Charles William Eliot Medal, Eliot House, Harvard University 1971. Assistant Senior Tutor, Eliot House, Harvard University 1970. Dexter Summer Grant, Harvard University 1966-67. Woodrow Wilson Fellowship 1966. Outstanding Undergraduate English Major, University of California, Berkeley 1965. Phi Beta Kappa TEACHING EXPERIENCE Spring 2020, emeritus graduate seminar, “Byron, Shelley and Keats” Spring 2019, emeritus seminar, “Romantic Literature and Painting” Phased Retirement 2016-18.
    [Show full text]
  • “Literature Itself: the New Criticism and Aesthetic Experience” By
    “Literature Itself: The New Criticism and Aesthetic Experience” By Daniel Green Philosophy and Literature Vol. 27. No.1, 2003 AFTER ALMOST TWO DECADES of tumult and transformation in university departments that still claim literature as part of the their disciplinary domain, what is most remarkable about literary study at the beginning of the twenty-first century is how similar it is to what passed for such study at the beginning of the twentieth century. Like philology one hundred years ago, academic literary study today-at least at the most eminent universities and in the most prestigious journals-is a highly esoteric activity, unlikely to appeal to anyone outside its own "professional" boundaries, anyone whose foremost interest in works of literature is simply to read them. It is, therefore, an endeavor that could hardly exist outside the university's institutional protection, and it is most strikingly concerned not with the appreciation of the intrinsic qualities of literature but with the historical and cultural "knowledge" that can be acquired from works of literature through a special kind of analysis. The effort, chronicled by Gerald Graff in Professing Literature, to make "literature itself ' the focus of academic study and to establish "aesthetic criticism" as the primary mode of literary study must surely be judged a failure, the current academic scene clearly dominated by the sort of scholars Graff terms "investigators."1 But of course the motives for rejecting the merely literary as a focus of study are quite different among current scholarly investigators as compared to the philologists of 1901. The attitude of the latter can probably be captured in the words of one of them quoted by Graff: "Why then waste time and brains in thrashing over again something which is after all only subjective opinion? Mere aesthetic theorizing should be left to the magazine writer or to the really gifted critic" (p.
    [Show full text]
  • Hateful Contraries: Studies in Literature and Criticism
    University of Kentucky UKnowledge Comparative Literature Arts and Humanities 12-31-1965 Hateful Contraries: Studies in Literature and Criticism W. K. Wimsatt Yale University Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Wimsatt, W. K., "Hateful Contraries: Studies in Literature and Criticism" (1965). Comparative Literature. 9. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_comparative_literature/9 Hateful Contraries This page intentionally left blank Hateful Contraries STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND CRITICISM By W. K. WIMSATT With an Essay on English Meter Written in Collaboration with Monroe C. Beardsley KENTUCKY PAPERBACKS UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY PRESS Lexington, 1966 Copyright© 1965 by the University of Kentucky Press Printed in the United States of America by the University of Kentucky Printing Division Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 65-11823 F. W. H. HUMANITATE INSIGNI DOCTOR! ET DUCTORI D. D. D. W. K. W. This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENT THE ESSAYS in criticism and critical history which compose this book were published (all but one), in their original versions, over a period of about twelve years, from 1950 to 1962. The first essay in the collection, "Horses of Wrath: Recent Critical Lessons," has been rewritten from parts of the fol­ lowing three: "Criticism Today: A Report from America," in Essays in Criticism, VI (January, 1956); "Poetic Tension: A Summary," in the New Scholasticism, XXXII (January, 1958); and "Horses of Wrath: Recent Critical Lessons," in Essays in Criticism, XII (January, 1962).
    [Show full text]